The Rift Walker
by Hixxi
Summary: Albaticus Caelius is captain of The Gilded Fang mercenaries, having left Tevinter after the dissolution of the Inquisition. Five years later he and his companions profit off the remains of unrest throughout Thedas, but when the group takes in a slave on the run, things change. And not necessarily for the better.
1. Chapter One: Divine Intervention?

**Chapter One: Divine Intervention?**

Drawing sharp breath in through his teeth, Albaticus managed to prop himself up on his elbows and blinked back tears drawn from dry smoke and hot dust in the air.

His head hurt and everything was on fire.

"Captain! You're alive! Shit, I thought you were fucking done for."

Through blurred vision the man made out a greenish shape bobbing in his general direction against the red heat of the flames. Ahh. Tessa. Who else? With a strangled grunt she kicked the fractured wooden beam that had smacked him in the head off from over his legs. She crouched next to him, looping her arm under his and heaving with grand purpose to haul him upright.

"Where are the others?"  
"Main square. Your leg is bleeding pretty bad, should I get Gray?"

It was a good idea ruined by the reality of his armour. Both of them knew that Tessa would not be able to drag his sorry carcass from inside the burning chantry if the worst happened and he could not at least marginally support himself. Albaticus tilted his head back a little and examined their surroundings, leaning on the girl more than he should have.

The painted ceilings were invisible under dark swirls of thick black smoke and the building groaned as the inferno began to take its real hold. Thankfully he could not have been unconscious more than a few moments or the poisoned air in his lungs would have finished him off long before Tessa could have even thought about rescuing him. He was grateful for that small kindness at least.

"There's no time. As fast as you can please Tess."

" _Right_."

She said it with the sort of certainty that he had grown to expect from his finest sapper. Despite the fact that she barely came up to most people's shoulders, Tessa was the type who was at her best when something challenged her; at her worst she was a sore loser. So off she shambled, sweat beading on the dark smudges of ash on her skin and both their hearts pounding in their chests.

For Albaticus the journey was agony. Each step was vicious, stabbing pain, even with Tessa taking as much of his weight as possible, and his vision faded in and out inconsistently and without mercy, reminding him how weak he was. When his booted, injured foot _did_ connect to the floor, he felt the blood that had soaked into the padding underneath his plate, and scarlet footprints marked their slow progress.

"Shit!" Tessa hissed as the creaking grew more ominous. Above them, a golden statue of Andraste warped hideously into molten, metallic lumps of dripping flesh with the heat, a parody of everything she represented. Tessa was doing her best to be as fast as possible, but she was already exhausted from the fighting and, ahh, if only Gray had simply come _with_ her.

They were about halfway across the beautifully paved chantry tiles when Albaticus stopped. Big, dark, fearful eyes turned on him.

"Captain?"

"Run, Tess."

" _What_?"

"I said go. That's an order."

With the last of his failing strength, he gave her an almighty shove. She almost fell, and there was a moment where he thought she might not leave, where her stubborn nature might kill them both. But at the last second she broke, wiped her bleeding palms on her shirt and then bolted. She ran so fast Albaticus thought she might actually fly, barely making it through the big red oaken doors before the statue above whined like a sick dog and crashed to the ground, severing his connection to the outside world.

So this was it then, he mused silently to himself.

Albaticus slumped downwards to the floor, leaning back against an ember streaked pillar to watch as great claws of orange flame savaged the chantry from the inside out.

A Tevinter expedition had arrived at this town two weeks ago. The locals had pooled together all their coin to hire a mercenary group to evict them after they had taken over a mine and shut down all production, cutting off the main source of income for many families. It should have been a simple enough job; Vint mages from unimportant bloodlines digging up supposed magic relics in weird places was nothing new.

So the demons had not been a surprise, all things considered.

The mayor being in on it had been. Things just went to hell sometimes, he supposed. And one could not win every battle.

Albaticus tried to shift his leg, but found that it had gone numb. He was in the middle of contemplating just how much everyone would cry at his funeral when the sound of frantic footsteps tore his gaze from the blood pooling under his ankle and snapped it directly to his left.

A few paces away from him a splintered door burst open and a tall, skinny man that Albaticus almost mistook for an elf staggered out, his cheeks pink and his expression flustered. He shook his hands as if fighting a static shock, and their eyes locked. He did not look like someone who was trapped in a burning building and desperately seeking an escape. He looked like someone who had just woken up from a pleasant afternoon nap.

After a moment of indecision, much like Tessa's, the man loped over to Albaticus' side with the gait of a perturbed rabbit and held up his hands. He said something, but Albaticus could not make it out over the sounds of the chantry twisting and screaming around them, ravaged by fire, giving up the ghost. He shook his head and pointed upwards.

Only now did the man seem to respond appropriately. He gasped, like he hadn't even noticed the blaze before now, and then seemed to … speak to someone on his right? This was a dream, there was no doubt. The smoke had rendered him comatose and this was his final delirium before the end.

Around him there was a swell of energy and a cold rush of wind as the stranger began to distort the very air about them both into green strands of magic. Albaticus decided not to fight the inevitable any longer and closed his eyes. His mind felt clearer than it had been in years, like a pleasantly cool pair of hands touching his face and drawing out all the imperfections of his life. If this was what death was, it was not all bad. He could certainly think of worse ways to go.

Comforting voices meandered over his thoughts, some familiar, some not, calling him away, all of them too important not to follow. He chased, emerald light permeating through the thick fog of darkness that pressed in on all sides the louder they got.

And then, quite suddenly, he was awake.

He was back in his tent, thick green canvas walls sloping upwards to a point above him.

"He's awake!"

Albaticus blinked up into Tessa's face and she burst promptly into tears. Without thinking about it, he reached up and ruffled the springy coils of her hair affectionately.

Eruthan cleared his throat to make himself known, lurking in the corner by his desk, shadowed by the lit candles that denoted the time to be late at night.

"... Where is he?" Albaticus asked, his voice hoarse.  
"With Needles. He's not up yet though."

There was a heady pause, and then the Dalish elf took a few steps forward into the more direct light, his arm bandaged all the way up to his elbow under his shirt.

"I have written a full report for when you can read it. Tessa, make yourself useful and go get the captain some soup. There's plenty left."

Glad of the excuse to save herself further humiliation from her very public sobbing, Tessa nodded. She wiped her face balefully with the back of her knuckles before slinking off, just to make a point of the fact that she was actually _far_ above weeping like some scared noblewoman.

He was pleased that she was well.

Speaking of which ...

Albaticus wriggled his toes tentatively beneath his thick linen blankets, the only decent thing to have come out of his time in Orlais, and was pleased to find that he still had two working legs. He let out a sigh of relief that he did not know he had been holding.

"Did you see what happened?" He asked his lieutenant.

"Not personally. Gray says he felt it though. He's defini-..."

A loud, high-pitched scream echoed through the camp from somewhere off to Albaticus' left, followed by raucous dwarven laughter.

"I shall retract my previous statement," Eruthan commented, his tone dry, "and go and make sure he does not incinerate anyone. Rest well."

The hunter glided from the tent with a vengeance before his captain could answer, as he usually did when he knew that Albaticus would start a pointless argument about something just for the sake of it.

The human ran a hand through his greying hair, his body stiff and almost past its prime.

But he was alive. And he dreaded to think of the miracle that had made it so.


	2. Chapter Two: Needles and Thread

**Chapter Two: Needles and Thread**

Eruthan did not leave straight away. Instead, he lurked outside the old man's tent until he was sure that his captain had gone back to sleep. Albaticus had the bad habit of slinking to his desk to shuffle through all the urgent paperwork that tended to accrue after such shenanigans before he was physically ready to do so. Eruthan was not the _only_ one who was sick and tired of having to constantly call medics to restitch wounds or change dirtied bandages because their illustrious leader refused to stay put and heal properly.

How he had survived in the world thus far was anyone's wretched guess.

Tucking a few strands of ash blond hair that had escaped from his ponytail back over a pointed ear, Eruthan waited until he could hear Albaticus' deep, grating snores. And then, happy that he was not being duped into a false sense of security regarding a certain someone's well being (the captain had pulled this on him twice before), the elf strode leisurely off across the camp.

The Gilded Fangs had been his people for just over five years now. He knew every member's name and face and history, even if they had never said a word to him past 'yes sir'. After the casualty report that Gray had brought to his desk they now numbered at seventy two, although he was sure that figure would shift in the days to come. Most of them were rank and file soldiers, disillusioned with whatever war or nation they had come from. Some were ex-Inquisition agents and a few were rehabilitated Templar. They even had one Antivan noble tucked away in their archery squad, although Eruthan was of the opinion that he thought they didn't know about his title.

Albaticus vetted each one personally and tended to turn more away than he kept, but those that did end up staying were good folk to have. Stalwart. Loyal. Spirited. Eruthan liked being able to count himself amongst their ranks. Even if his own beginnings with them had been ... shaky at best.

Back in the present, however, the elf made past Korah's fire pit just in time to catch Tessa leaving with a heavy bowl of soup. The girl had stopped crying but now her expression was fierce; he knew she would just leave the food and back out if Albaticus was asleep or scold him something awful if he was not, so he let her go about her business, and simply nodded at their talented dwarven cook as he strolled by.

When The Gilded Fangs arrived in a location they attempted to set up roughly in the same pattern each time, so that no one got lost and things were readily accessible. The medical shelters they generally arranged neatly on the northernmost fringes of wherever they were, space allowing. Largely this was simply because it was far easier to carry in the wounded when one did not have to navigate through a badly pitched maze of guy lines, sometimes in the dark. Eruthan himself had fallen prey to this particular embarrassment more than once.

Of course, unofficially, it was widely accepted that the infirmary was assembled just a little way back from everyone else because their head physician did not enjoy aimless company, valued her privacy, and, quite frankly, a lot of people were scared of her.

As he padded towards the two yurts that they kept dedicated to the Fangs' surgery, Eruthan noted that only one was lit, as per usual. He lingered just for a second before peeling back the latticed threshold and making himself known to its occupants.

Needles sat with her back to her lieutenant, just off to his right as he closed the door behind him. She was hunched over one of her benches, working on something finicky, no doubt, as the only acknowledgement of his existence that she gave was the tiniest, strictest bob of her head before she returned to her concealed endeavour.

They were in no immediate danger then.

In the corner past her form was a slightly more comfortable set of bedrolls than the majority of them enjoyed, heaped up into one big pile. Next to them sat Grint, a surface dwarf from Redcliffe (or Denerim, or wherever else in Ferelden took his fancy when you asked) who, on a good day, could often be found sounding out ideas on how to woo their chef. None of his highly complex strategies of seduction ever worked, and Eruthan had lost count of the amount of times they had involved live chickens. Korah never relented to his advances, and thus Grint seemed to exist eternally in the role of determind, yet unrequited would-be lover. And sometimes he made a damned fine axe wielder too.

"Lad woke up, took one look at her, shrieked his head off for a bit and then fainted clean away," chuckled Grint, gesturing to the bed-mountain, "I _almost_ felt sorry for him."

The dwarf patted the mound of blankets and Eruthan had to skirt around him to examine the face that just barely poked out of the top, settling down on one knee to get a better look at the invalid. He was tall creature but skinny for a human, with an unruly mop of curly brown hair and sallow, pale skin. His face was square jawed and his nose had obviously been broken once or twice, but he looked harmless enough in sleep, and if he reacted thus to Needles, they probably had nothing to worry about.

The lieutenant and his unit had seen the chantry collapse from the outskirts of the town, too far away to have done anything about it. They had just finished off the last of the demons that had been summoned by the wayward magisters but even if they'd have been able to run at full speed up the hill to the courtyard above, they never would have made it in time to help. When they _had_ caught up to the flaming wreckage however, it was to find a perfectly spherical clearing right in the centre of all the horrendous, burning, blackened destruction. Albaticus and … this man had been contained within.

Tessa had given a decent enough report, but even she could offer no explanation of events past 'magic'. What sort of wizardry had been involved and the identity of their guest remained an enigma. He had not had anything on his person that would have signified that he was, say, from the College of Enchanters for example. And so Eruthan was more than marginally disappointed that the mysterious stranger had lapsed back into unconsciousness for the time being. He would have to wait a little longer for his answers.

"What sort of condition is he in?" The lieutenant asked Needles after a few moments, without looking up at her.

"Exhausted. Bruised. Severely malnourished."

"He'll live?"

"Yes."

There was a brief pause, and then Eruthan gave into temptation.

"... So ... what _exactly_ did he scream at you ..?"

Needles said nothing, but she did offer a consolation prize by way of glaring at him over her shoulder, and Eruthan and Grint swapped wide grins.

"You'll keep him safe from her wicked ways I take it?"

"No one's safer than with me!" The dwarf chuffed with a wave of his beefy hands.

"I don't doubt that my friend."

Eruthan rose gracefully and clapped a palm to his friend's shoulder, stealing one last look at their visitor before he left.

"Let me know the moment he wakes properly. Grint, could you find Lienne? It might be good to have her on hand just in case he starts throwing magic around."

"... Wise." Needles commented.

A loud caw punctuated her remark from outside and, languidly, the woman finally rose from her chair. No wonder their guest had screeched so, especially if he happened to be from Tevinter, which Eruthan highly suspected was the case. Even with the new yurts they had bought last winter, the top of their surgeon's head still almost brushed the ceiling.

She moved with purpose, her gait solid and focused, the dusty gray of her skin shadowed black with only candlelight to pick out her figure in the darkness. Crimson eyes lay under a heavy brow which curled backwards into the horns that marked her race, and stark white hair wound its way in a thick, singular braid to the small of her back.

The Qunari stretched her hand to the outside, and when she pulled it back, it was with a brown and ivory speckled raptor attached to it.

"I hate that bloody thing." Grint grumbled sourly. Needles chuckled so quietly that Eruthan was not quite sure she had even done so in the first place, and she took the amiable bird of prey to his perch next to her desk, where he hopped off of her fist and helped himself to a few strips of almost-bad meat that his mistress had had ready for his return.

"I'd wager that he thinks of you no more fondly," the surgeon mused, far more talkative now she was apparently done with her previous task, "now unless both of you insist on disturbing me and my patient any longer, I suggest you set yourself to more agreeable tasks."

Eruthan did not lose his smile. He was used to her mannerisms and so was Grint, even if his interest in such ran only as far as he could successfully tease her. Still, the dwarf got up too as Needles shifted over to check on their new vagrant.

"I'll come with you to find Lienne, if you don't mind. I'm not so tired just yet."

"Of course."

The pair exited without bidding their towering healer farewell. Eruthan knew that even if he did offer such, she would not bother replying.


	3. Chapter Three: Full Circle

**Chapter Three: Full Circle**

In truth, despite their numbers, the Fangs only had three mages in their ranks. Gray was one, Lienne was another, and Maurice was the third. Gray generally tended to join them on combat missions and excelled at fighting all manner of enemies, but Lienne did not particularly have the stomach for such and was therefore more valuable as a learned Circle mage with an excellent grasp of magical theory and history. Or if they really, really needed someone who was good at number puzzles.

Maurice had joined them at only seventeen and, whilst he tried as hard as he possibly could, he was nearly only ever useful if they wanted someone to trip up and accidentally set a room on fire.

He came in handy more often than they'd like to admit.

Lienne had readily agreed to move her sleeping things in with Needles for the night to keep an eye on their potential magic user, as chirpy as she ever was despite the late hour. Grint had offered to stay and guard the man as well, but their Qunari healer had scowled and curtly told them all that she did not need any more clutter littering her surgery, _thank you very much_.

Now, with the night's business concluded at last and safe in the knowledge that things were, for the moment, stable, Eruthan eased himself into his own sleeping roll, running his thumb along the fine Dalish embroidery that had been lovingly stitched into the thick fabric. The hands that had made this for him when he was a youngster would never do so again, but he drew comfort from this small remnant of his childhood. Often he wondered what his parents or his Keeper might think about his life now, but he supposed it was an exercise in futility at best; wishing would not bring them back from the grave.

He had not realised how tired he actually was until now. The events of the past week had exhausted him more than he had let himself realise. He went over the things he needed to do when he awoke in his head, a mental checklist, and then curled himself into his blankets and finally found sleep.

On the other side of the camp Needles had finally bedded down herself leaving Lienne not alone, but locked into a quiet solitude. The mage had not come on the mission to Nantwich, but when they had told her of what had happened there she had 'borrowed' a horse and ridden out herself in the cold and wet. There had been lingering traces of magic in the air all around her but nothing concrete that she could have pulled for examination, so, miserable, she had plodded back empty handed and Eruthan had scolded her for running off. Therefore she was secretly pleased that he had asked her to babysit their newest recruit now.

Like her lieutenant, Lienne was an elf. But unlike him, she was not of the Dalish. She had been born in Nevarra, and been taken to the Perendale Circle at five years old. She had stayed throughout the rebellion, believing that the Maker had made things the way they were for a reason, but when Divine Victoria had reformed the Circle of Magi the rest of the rebel mages had been allowed to instate their College of Enchanters and Lienne had decided, a few years older by that point, to leave Perendale and head to join it.

On the way, really too inexperienced of the outside world to have had anything else happen, she had been tricked by a shady merchant into losing all her coin in a tavern, and would have been destitute if the Fangs had not seen everything and Albaticus hadn't stepped in with a timely game of Wicked Grace. He had won all her money back and more and, having never really had the time for cards growing up, Lienne had been intrigued by the complex rules and strategy involved. Albaticus had promised to teach her.

That had been three years ago.

To keep herself occupied whilst her charge slept off whatever maladies had befallen him, Lienne had brought her journal with her to record her thoughts and feelings on the day, something she liked to do whenever she had a spare moment, and now the only sounds in the yurt aside from breathing were the scratchings of her quill on the rough paper of her diary.

That was, however, until a shifting of fabric that did not belong to her caught her ear.

Lienne bookmarked her place in her writing and set it to one side, swinging her lantern around her form so that she could sit a little closer to her present company, being careful not to loom over and scare him like Needles had.

"Don't be afraid. I am Lienne, and you are quite safe. What is your name?" She asked gently, a small ghostlike smile on her lips.

The man stared up at her over the edge of his bed linen with big, deep brown eyes like frightened puppy. At first he declined to respond, and then, so quiet she could barely hear him, he whispered up at her.

"Was it a dream?"  
"No, sweetheart."

He pressed his eyes shut once more and grimaced, and then let out a deep sigh through his nose before gazing back up at her again. She did not want to press him, but it was critical that he could trust at least one person here, all things considered, if they were going to find out what had happened at Nantwich.

Time passed at a crawl as he worked through exactly what he should do. And then, finally, he spoke again, answering her initial question.

"I'm Ivian," he murmured, "where are we?"  
"Pleased to meet you Ivian. We are about three miles out from Nantwich, west of Wildervale in the Free Marches."  
"You're not from the Imperium?"  
"No."  
"Will you take me back?"

Lienne shook her head. "Not if you don't want too."

So Eruthan had been correct in his assumption. Ivian must have been with the Tevinter expedition that they had gone up against, but he was no magister. She felt a little sorry for him and, without thinking, reached out to softly brush some of his hair from his dirty forehead.

He regarded the action as if she had granted him a marvel, and she wondered herself as to whether anyone had ever done so for him in the past.

"Are you hungry?"  
"No."

He was a good liar, but she knew better. She twisted to unclip her satchel and dug out the bread roll she had brought with her, tore it in half, and then offered the bigger half to him. He, once more, took a long time deciding whether or not to accept, and she simply sat still until a long fingered, bony hand appeared from out underneath the blankets to anxiously take it from her, like she might decide to rescind the offer just to make fun of him.

Ivian sat up to eat, rolling the pile of blankets to his lap. He tore small chunks off bit by bit, transferring them to his mouth and chewing slowly. To not make him feel uncomfortable, she ate at the same pace, and for a long time they just chewed in silence. When he was done, he looked around and Lienne realised that he was searching for somewhere to deposit his crumbs. He happily pooled them into her own hands when prompted and she flung them out the front of the yurt for the birds before coming back to his side.

"There now, feeling a little better?" She asked him as she resettled herself. He nodded, and returned her smile with the tiniest one of his own. "Good," she continued, "I'll get Korah to make you something nice for breakfast. She owes me a favour."

He tilted his head a little at the name. "Who is Korah?"

It was positive, she thought, that he felt able to ask such a question of her.

"Korah is our sort of … 'camp organiser', so to speak. She cooks for everyone, but she also assigns all the chores too. No one escapes."  
"Chores?"  
"Yes, how much do you remember of what happened?"

Ivian brought his hands together in his lap and turned his face away from her, scrunching his nose up as if to concentrate on stringing together the relevant memories.

"There was … a fire … and a man. I … saved him?"  
"You did. His name is Albaticus Caelius and he's my captain. You're with The Gilded Fang right now. We're a mercenary company."  
"He seemed like a good man."  
"He is."

She was surprised that he wasn't asking more questions until she remembered exactly what he was. He'd probably been taught that curiousity didn't just _kill_ the cat, and maybe even something as simple as asking who Korah was had been his limit. Lienne caught her bottom lip between her teeth and chewed in thought, a bad habit of hers.

Maybe he did not like the fact that Albaticus' name was clearly Tevinter in origin.

"Ivian," she said gently, reaching out to softly pat his shoulder to get his attention, "if I ask you some questions would you answer them for me? You can just say yes or no, if you like. You do not have to go into any detail you do not want to."

He considered this, and then nodded.

"Thank you. So you are from Tevinter?"  
"Yes."  
"And you were a … slave?"  
"Yes."  
"How old are you?"  
"Twenty eight."  
"You came to Nantwich with the expedition?"  
"Yes, my master brought me."  
"And you do not want to return?"  
"No thank you."

She smiled in amusement at his polite refusal. It was sweet, in a very courteous way.

"Just one last thing. Ivian, are you a mage?"

This one gave him pause. His eyes widened and he drummed his fingers on his knees, debating internally as to what answer would be the best one to give. But honesty seemed to win out and he stiffly bobbed his head, confirming what she already knew.

It was a gamble, but Lienne beamed cheerfully at him and, with a flick of her hand, conjured a tiny wisp of flame to her palm.

"Oh! You're a mage too!" He gasped, and some of the tension her inquiries had generated vanished into thin air. Lienne shook her hand free of the fire. "I am originally from the Perendale Circle in Nevarra, although I am not sure how much you know of such. Ivian, listen, it is very late and ... really I should have gone to fetch my lieutenant to speak to you. He will be very angry with me for not doing such but I did not want to wake him. So what I propose is that we both get some sleep and talk more in the morning, how about that?"

His eyes smiled rather than his lips this time, happy enough at being granted this courtesy.

"Will you stay here with me?"  
"Of course."  
"Will the … will the Qunari woman … is she still here?"  
"Needles? Yes. But don't worry too much about her. She's not going to hurt you. She's one of us - The Gilded Fang."  
"One of us," he repeated back at her, like the words had a special meaning that he'd only just discovered, "I think it'll be okay if you're here too."

Lienne chuckled quietly at this, and then leaned over to affectionately prod the end of Ivian's long nose.

"Things are always okay when I am here."


End file.
